nodus
[noh-duh s]
1. a difficult or intricate point, situation, plot, etc.
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“I don’t get it.” Ken said as he looked over the loose
sheets of paper.
“What’s
wrong?” Julie asked.
She peered over Ken’s shoulder as
he read. He was looking at a section of
her manuscript that was towards the end.
It was, essentially the big reveal, where everything else came together
and all the questions were answered. It
wasn’t quite the climax, but led directly to it.
“Well, it’s
kind of, I don’t know, confusing.”
“How
so?”
“It’s
really complicated. Like, really, overly
complicated. I just can’t follow it.”
Julie
was horrified. She felt it was all
perfectly clear, but if a smart guy like Ken couldn’t understand what she had
wrote, how could anyone else? She nearly
tore the page out of his hands and furiously read what she had written, hoping
to find the places that could be confusing.
But alas, her bias as the author prevented her from seeing it.
“Where? Which part?” She asked.
“All of
it. The antagonist’s entire plot is
really overly complicated and confusing.
And now that he’s explaining it all, I just think ‘huh?’ You need to simplify pretty much everything.”
That
was a daunting task. The book was over
three hundred pages long, and the build up for the reveal was scattered across
the entire thing.
“I…I
don’t think I can do that.” She said. “I
worked really hard on making his plan, and how it would all fit together with
everything that happens.”
“Yeah,
that might be the problem, actually.
Does his plan have to touch everything?
I mean, some things can happen just because they happen, and he just
takes advantage of it, you know?”
“Okay,
fine. But if I make it too simple, won’t
it be easy for the reader to predict what’s going on?”
“Depends. You don’t have to make it super obvious, just
simpler than what you have. Cut out the extraneous
parts and just keep the really important sections. Like the it about the train and the
trucks. That’s good. You can keep that. But then the computer things? Those aren’t really important to what he’s
trying to do as I understand it. I guess
you might think differently, but still.
Just think about what he’s trying to accomplish and keep the parts of
the plan that directly lead up to that goal.
Those things that are made to hinder people or something like that can
go.”
“I see.”
Julie thought about what Ken was saying.
She
took another look at the page in question.
Suddenly, it was obvious.
Everything Ken was talking about became painfully obvious to her, and
she saw that more than half of what she had written could be changed
drastically, or cut entirely.
“I
think I get it.” She said. “But there’s
things I really like, but aren’t directly a part of his goal. I don’t want to lose those.”
“Then
don’t. They can still be a part of the
story, just in a different way. Like I
said, it could be something unexpected that he just takes advantage of.”
“Sounds
hard. I’ll have to change a lot of stuff
if I do that.”
“Yeah,
but that’s all part of the process.
Nobody said writing a book would be easy, you know.”
“That’s
true.” She paused for a few seconds
before saying anything else, “So, are there any other things that I need to
change?”
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The second draft is hard. It really is. You have to take something you worked hard to write, and then completely change almost everything about it in some way. It kind of sucks, but it has to be done. If the world lacked second drafts, just about everything ever written would suck.
2nd draft blues?
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